1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for generating a digital font (herein below, abbreviated as “font”) used for an information-processing apparatus, a printer, or the like. In particular, the present invention pertains to an apparatus, a method, and a computer-readable storage medium recording a program for generating fonts according to the preferences of a user or near a user's handwriting.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are various typeface such as “Mincho” style (typical Japanese typeface), Gothic style, brush style, “Kyokasho” (meaning “textbook” in English) style, handwritten character style, or the like, among the typefaces of the fonts used by printers or an information-processing apparatus such as a personal computer, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), or the like. These fonts are provided by a computer maker, a font maker, or the like.
In this specification, the “font” means a character set created with the same typeface, and each character marking each division of the font, or equivalently, each character constituting the font is defined as a “font character”.
Although such a font typeface is beautifully designed in appearance, conversely, it may give a reader of a printed document an impression of uniformity and a lack of individuality. Moreover, there are also many users who feel resistance to using these fonts for personal documents, such as a letter.
Against such a background, the application software has been provided capable of creating a new typeface and generating a user's individual fonts by processing a positioning arrangement, a deformation, or the like to radicals constituting “Kanji” characters (Japanese characters), such as “Hen” (i.e., a left-hand radical of the “Kanji”), “Tsukuri” (i.e., a right-hand radical of the “Kanji”), or the like. However, since such application software supported only the very limited typeface fonts, such as the “Mincho” style or the Gothic style, it was very difficult for the user to create a user's individual font.
Further, in the case of the Japanese language, since many characters are needed as compared with European languages, the number of the “Kanji” characters used in the Japanese language reaches about 3,000 characters in Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) level-1 kanji characters, and also reaches about 7,000 characters included JIS level-2 kanji characters. Therefore, enormous efforts are needed in order to create the user's individual font using the application software.
Moreover, an application software for creating the fonts using handwritten characters inputted by means of a picture reading apparatus such as an image scanner is also provided. However, through the use of such the application software, since a user has to write all the necessary characters by hand, enormous efforts are needed in order to create the user's individual font.
In order to solve such a problem, an apparatus for font generation based on the handwritten characters of users by recognizing the handwritten characters, comparing with a basic font applicable to the recognized characters in order to extract the features of a user's handwritten characters, memorizing the extracted features, and changing the basic font based on the features is proposed. (See the Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication (Kokai) No. H10-333663.)
In the font generation apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned reference, even if a user's font of the handwritten character style can be created, the font which a user desires cannot necessarily be created. For example, the user whose handwriting is poor may desire a font of a more beautiful typeface, and a font according to the user's handwritten character style is not necessarily the typeface which a user desires.
Further, generally it is difficult to express favorite fonts by a conversation or writing, etc. Furthermore, even when creating a font according to the preferences of a user by modifying the already-existing fonts, it is also difficult to explain which parts or how to modify the font characters of the already-existing fonts in order to approach the preferences of the user. Therefore, the user has to repeat trial and error until a font according to the preferences of user are created.